Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

You'tr time travelling again, aren't you?

This conversation reminds me of a book I read back in high school - it was one of the non-canonical Star Trek novels (I think).

All I remember about it was that Mr. Spock kept going back in time to fix something (probably to save the Enterprise?), but something would go wrong so he'd have to go back in time again. The result was that there were a whole bunch of Mr. Spocks running around the ship, each having a different amount of knowledge about the situation depending on when they went back in time - and they began encountering each other trying to piece together how much each one knew (as the further into the situation they got, the more knowledge on what would work to fix it and what wouldn't work was amassed to avert disaster.)

I have no recollection on how it was resolved (or how there was only one Spock at the end), but it addressed lots of time paradoxes - like; if you can time travel then why not just keep going back to fix something, and what happens when divergent versions of a time traveler exist in the same time frame.

Director: Doug Liman
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton
Genre: Sci-Fi Action-Adventure

About: In 2015 a meteorite hits Earth releasing deadly alien lifeforms known as mimics. In the next five years these 'mimics' spread over continental Europe, killing everything in their path. On the eve of the largest mass counter strike in human history, a public relations officer, Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is ordered to film the first wave of the battle of the English Channel. Major Cage refuses to go into battle and tries to blackmail the General, in a failed attempt to get out of the assignment. Instead, the General has his revenge and...Major Cage wakes up as Private Cage, with orders to fight the enemy like any other foot soldier. Unprepared for battle, and still a coward, Cage finds himself on the beachhead where he's promptly killed...but due to a mysterious series of events, he ends up living the day over and over.


Review: Major Cage (Tom Cruise) is having a bad day! He's a suck-up public relations officer, who doesn't have an ounce of courage in him. But he will! By living and dying over and over, he gains knowledge of the battle and guts too!

I thought this sci fi action time travel movie was done very well. Sort of like a Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers. Say what you will about Tom Cruise, after 35 years in the business he's learned a thing or two about acting. Lately Cruise has been specializing in block buster action packed movies, and in that role he's pretty good. I especially liked the earlier parts of the film where he plays a self serving, self important, PR guy who's willing to use blackmail to get out of harms way.


Emily Blunt is the girl. She made a good one too. I bought into her Full Metal Bitch persona as one tough warrior cookie. Nods to a cool performance by Bill Paxton too who plays a colorfully tough, southern sergeant in charge of the grunts. Eat them cards!

The ending goes big, a bit too big for my taste, but compared to other films of this type, Edge of Tomorrow keeps the story line from becoming like an action fantasy movie. I would have skipped the last few minutes of the film, which felt a bit counterproductive to the rest of this well done flick.

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Very good flick that should make the Sci-Fi countdown.

I've had Edge Of Tomorrow sitting on the shelf for months now, I'll definitely get round to watching it before the deadline.

I'll have to watch Edge Of Tomorrow for the sci-fi countdown. Even if it doesn't make my list, it sounds like it's worth watching.

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Good review Citizen and a bit of a surprise...doesn't strike m as your kind of movie.

Citizen I highly recommend Galaxy Quest...there is a review of it on page 31 of my review thread.

Great review...its definitely time for a re-watch of this one.

Edge of Tomorrow was done VERY well and I do agree regarding the very end the all travel (over and over and over and. . .) to get there is very worthwhile.

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Thanks.... I know it didn't seem like my kind of movie to me either. That's why I past it by for such a long time. I like Tom Cruise, but I haven't seen many of his movies. I only watched Top Gun & Cocktail for the first time, last year.

I'll read your review after I watch Galaxy Quest, I know GBG has been recommending it to me for years. Hopefully I'll catch it soon.

Director: Brin Hill
Writer: Joss Whedon
Cast: Michael Stahl-David, Zoe Kazan, Mark Feuerstein
Genre: Romance, Fantasy

About: Two people who don't know each other but have had a telepathic bond since childhood. The bond allows them to experience each others' feelings and even see through the others eyes.

Review: In Your Eyes has it's heart in the right place and makes for an easy watch' as long as you overlook the plot holes and the silly ending. The small budget Indie film makes good use of it's two lead actors and it's interesting premise, that ask: what if two people from different walks of life had this special telepathic connection that allowed them to have a caring friend always with them in their head.


The story plays like a made for Lifetime TV movie. The scenes of the likable ex-con, now gone straight who's hanging out in the local bar where he runs into the local hoodlums, reminded me of TV's The Fall Guy, or Road House (1988). The actor Michael Stahl-David was likable enough, but I thought the ex con being pressured into commenting another crime seemed a bit pot boiler. However I did like his junky trailer out in the middle of nowhere, very cool setting for his story line.

I liked the other lead two, Zoe Kazan though for the longest time I though she was playing the daughter of the doctor. Image my surprise when I figured out she was his wife! She barely looks old enough to drive, yet alone be married. Speaking of the marriage part, it didn't add to the story. I'd rather her be a lonely college girl. That would have been more romantic than her falling in love with someone else behind her husband's back.

The Ending....I will spoil the ending...so don't read any further if you plan on watching this.

The ending was funny in an OMG you got to be kidding way. The ex con steals a car and is chased around a junk yard by a couple of cop with mud flying everywhere..in what looked like a scene from Smoky and the Bandit. Then the girl, who's locked up in a mental institute, is telepathically guided by him on how to pick the door lock with a bent fork, shades of TV's MacGyver. Then they escape by jumping onto a moving train in the freezing snow and off they go to Canada. But wait! they have no money and he's a convict on the run.

Like I said, it was fun if you don't take it too seriously

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Director: Jaco Van Dormael
Writer: Jaco Van Dormael
Cast: Jared Leto, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger
Genre: Drama-Romance, Fantasy-Sci Fi

About: A human is born with the unique ability to remember the future. As the boy stands at a train station platform, he has to choose to leave on the train with his mother or stay behind with his father. An infinite number of possible realities arise from his decision. As long as the boy doesn't choose, then all future realities are possible.


Review: Brevity is the cure to bloating...I liked this movie, it's very impressive, but really bloated. Not because it's 2 hours 20 minutes long, but because there's a surplus of unneeded ideas being included for eyeball appeal. The director (who also wrote it) literally throws in every single idea that he must have had.

The main bulk of the movie is thought provoking and expertly done with a high emotional storyline about Nemo Nobody's life. We watch him in different realities as a child, then as a teen, also as an adult. We see how the different realities impact him and those around hm.

The actor who played him as a teen was effective at getting across the pain he felt from being a perpetual outsider. The story arches of his teen realities with two of the girls he would marry in his adult realities, were my favorite.


Jared Leto plays the adult Nemo and the elderly old man too. I liked his story lines, but they didn't feel as developed as the teen stories were.

I thought the futuristic sci fi elements were well done if you like CG eye candy, but they took away from the spiritual tone of the movie and made it more like a golly gee whiz look at that. Luckily most of the film isn't CG.


Mr Nobody is a very hard movie to describe as it's visually and story wise very different and that difference changes through out the movie.

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Director: Richie Mehta
Writer: Richie Mehta
Cast: Haley Joel Osment, Rufus Sewell, Gillian Anderson
Genre: Sci-Fi Drama Mystery

About: When a mother and her young son is left standing at the airport, a ten year search is on for her missing husband. As the son grows up he learns of his dad's time travel machine, and seeks to solve the mystery as to why dad didn't come back.

Review: Ugh, this was boring. I try not to use that word but it was tedious. Worst than that was the bad acting, especially from child actor Haley Joel Osment, The Sixth Sense (1999) & A.I Artificial Intelligence (2001), now grown up and amazingly enough his acting skills didn't grow with him. Which is OK as he's surrounded by mediocre acting, in a go nowhere script that plays like an episode of The Outer Limits (1995-2002). Well that's not quite fair to The Outer Limits which produced some truly fine TV episodes.



The only bright spot in this dim Indie film is Gillian Anderson. Yes she can act and act up a storm she does. But she can't save a lame story line with even lamer dialogue. I wish the film had been about her and it might have been a bit better.

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Mr. Nobody is a tricky movie to decipher or for that matter, explain, and while it does get a lost in the assortment of "possible realities" I did enjoy it very much. Glad to see your write up on it.

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)
Director: Kent Jones
Writers: Kent Jones, Serge Toubiana
Cast: Alfred Hitchcock,Francois Truffaut, Wes Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Linkletter, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese
Genre: Documentary

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) is a no frills documentary about Francois Truffaut's 1966 ground breaking book, "Cinema According to Hitchcock" and the current crop of directors who his book influenced. Through archival footage of Hitch and Truffaut we learn about the French director who ushered in the era of 'French New Wave' film making and we learn how his appreciation of Hitch's films helped elevate Hitch from being considered an entertainment director...to a master.

And we learn of Hitch himself and how his mind worked as he composes scenes and envisioned how his next movie would look. We learn of what he valued in film making and also of what he had wished to accomplish on the silver screen, but felt he had failed to do so.

Much of Hitch's popularity today among film makers comes from their youth when they fawned over their own copies of "Cinema According to Hitchcock".


The documentary also gives time to Truffaut and tells us about the man and his films. Through interviews we gain an insight into how Hitch and Truffaut help shape modern cinema.

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) is a rather dry documentary, so don't expect to be 'entertained' by it. But for those who are interested in film making...and of course interested in Hitchcock and Truffaut, the film is a must see.

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Director: David Mackenzie
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Cast: Dale Dickey, Ben Foster, Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges
Genre: Crime Drama

About: In a sleepy, rural Texas town a poor divorced father and his ex-con brother come up with a plan to save the family ranch from being repossessed by the bank.

Review: Hell or High Water has a little something for everyone, which can be a strength, or a weakness. Usually the latter.


Strengths: Beautiful scenery and cinematography. The camera work is done with an eye to the composition of the shot. When coupled with the stunningly stark beauty of Texas and processed with a warm yellow color tone the film looks great. Hint...that ain't Texas! The entire film was shot in New Mexico. But fair enough, it looked like Texas to me.

The film almost makes a sympathetic case for the two bank robbing brothers, setting up their story like a modern day Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid. We learn that the small Texas town has a corrupt bank system that the locals disdain and that the locals are none to eager to help the law find these two bandits. That element is the most interesting part of the film...but it's never really explored deeply, which is too bad.


Weakness: Is the over the top shootout that comes towards the film's climax. Oh...and I get it, for the movie to make money it has to have some big guns and even bigger explosions and so it does!...but it was never a shoot em up movie in the fist place, so it was disappointing it ended that way.


I must say I wasn't a fan of the racial taunting of the Indian/Mexican Ranger (Gil Birmingham) by his fellow partner (Jeff Bridges). Bridges plays a crusty old Ranger about to retire from the force, and he enjoy nothing more than taunting his half Indian partner. Of course this shows that he really likes his partner and it's suppose to be funny to boot, all while setting up the ending.

Well, it's not funny to here racial slurs and it's been done before way to often...which makes it cliched, over used troupe. To me it seemed like lazy script writing. With some script changes this could have been an exceptional film.

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I liked that movie a little more than you did, and I think I liked the things that you disliked. Still, I thought it was pretty unoriginal for such an acclaimed film.

I almost loved that film, except for the racial taunting which bugged me, and the shootout, car chase ending.... Though I did like the scene where Jeff Bridges takes care of the older brother.

I'm not opposed to violence in the film, but the ending seemed to belong to a different kind of film. It seemed tacked on.

You ever see Wisdom from the 80's? It probably sucks but I loved it back then.